Mary Monday: and hold it up to the light

sweet peas, originally uploaded by pilgrimgirl.

A friend recently posted this poem to her Facebook page, and I just love it...(and as for the picture, I am dreaming of sweet peas a lot these days--because mine are not yet flowering...)

Introduction to Poetry
Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.